Many children with ASD partake in escape maintain behaviors for numerous reasons. Children with autism might have difficulty attending to long tasks, can get overwhelmed with novel activities, and the challenging behaviors may heighten when too many demands are placed on them. As a result, teachers, parents and interventionists may start to witness children’s challenging behaviors increase. Many of the challenging behaviors are thought to have an escape function from the long or difficult task at hand. This paper will find and address various strategies that may be applied to decrease escape maintained behaviors in children with ASD. The aim for this review study is to describe and evaluate research findings of antecedent-based strategies and evidence-based practices used to assist in decreasing escape maintained behaviors in children with ASD. This study is to suggest educational implications for interventionists and parents. Keywords: autism, escape, escape maintained behaviors, decrease challenging behaviors, alternative behaviors, antecedent based intervention, evidence based practices

Finding of previous research has shown that disruptive behavior can impair students’ academic success (Pierce, Reid, & Epstein, 2004), as well as increase teacher’s stress level (Westling, 2010). Class Pass Intervention (CPI) is a Tier 2 intervention designed to decrease disruptive behavior and increase academic engagement, however, thus far research on the effects of CPI has been limited to typically developing elementary and high school students with escape and attention-maintained problem behaviors. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to replicate and extend previous research on the effects of CPI on problem behavior and academic engagement however with students whose problem behavior was multiply-maintained. The study used a multiple baseline design to assess experimental control. In the current study, CPI led to a decrease in problem behavior and increase in academic engagement for two students with ADHD and one student at risk of ADHD, all of whom engaged in problem behavior maintained by escape, access to attention, or both. In addition, results of a social validity assessment completed with teachers and students indicated that the intervention was effective and easy, respectively.